Bluebasser86

I wear a sun shirt with the gaiter every time I go. It's cooler than a T-shirt and I wear zero sun screen, which contains all kinds of harmful chemicals, as a result of how covered up I can get with all the sun protective gear I wear. Mine are Magellan shirts from Academy.

Went out for a few hours Saturday morning. Started in the creek but it was unusually tough. The bites I got were smaller than usual for some reason. Bait was everywhere and there was actually shoreline grass growing into the water, extending out several feet in lots of places, so maybe they had changed their habits and I just didn't figure them out. Found one that tried to swallow my jig though. Moved to the main lake for the last couple hours to just fish around the ramp cove. As I got there, I noticed a really small V-bottom skipping across the waves that were building fast. I watched for a minute, but he was getting close to the ramp so I assumed he was good and went to preparing my kayak to launch. Had a state worker doing a creel survey ask some questions, and I backed my kayak down the ramp. As soon as I hoped out of the truck, I noticed a pontoon holding onto the nose of a mostly submerged boat, 100 feet from the ramp and a person in the water with several items floating. I found out later, little V-bottom guy turned too sharp, took a wave over the back and it was over. The pontoon was a husband and wife team, her reversing hard towards the ramp docks while he was holding onto a rope thrown around the nose boat cleat. I went to the end of the dock they were heading towards and tried directing a guy with an old bass boat to move forward or to a different dock because a boat was sinking and they were incoming with it, but he said he could only move forward a couple feet or his boat would potentially scrape bottom. The poor lady was obviously very stressed and the young man wasn't helping the situation by refusing to move, so we aimed for the next dock. She did a great job managing to get the boats within range and the husband tossed the rope to me. There was another husband and wife on the launch dock that ignored the goings-on while I strained to drag the mostly submerged boat around the end of the dock and up the ramp while the pontoon retrieved the owner. Once they got back with him, I helped him drag it out far enough that all sides were above water level so he could bail water, then hopped in my kayak and pedaled around, retrieving what I could of his items that were floating. I didn't find a lot, but recovered a few things for the unfortunate guy. He didn't lose either motor, his battery, or either fishing rod, so he seemed pretty happy with that. After all this had gone on, I only had about an hour left to fish. Only managed 4 bites, broke one of them off, then caught 3 off the same tree, one was pretty decent. Sunday, I took my boys creek fishing for a while. It was kind of slow, but the last stop we made was loaded with longear sunfish on spawning beds. They're not the biggest fish around, but those spawning males are always some of the prettiest.

I fish a little, homemade 1/8oz jig pretty often when the bite is tough.

I've caught 2 smallies out there. Lake record is a little over 4 unless someone caught a bigger one. I've had the opposite issue of catching tons of fish but not many bigger ones the last couple trips out there.

I like the Magellan pants from Academy. About as cheap as you can find them and zip off legs if you want to. https://www.academy.com/p/magellan-outdoors-mens-back-country-2-0-zip-off-pants?sku=green-dark-04-xx-large

The crowds are insane and so many of them were very rude. I fish to try to get away from the crowds, so it wasn't a lot of fun for me.

Dislike-crankbaits, yeah I catch fish on them, but I don't fishing them. There's a lot of fishing days that I don't have a cranking rod with me in the kayak. Can't Stand-C-rig, I'd rather just go home than drag a ball and chain. Can't catch fish with-Deep diving cranks, I think our fish are scared of deep water. I own a lot of crankbaits, I bet less than 15 of them dive pass 10'. I also own a deep cranking rod, but I'm not sure the last time I used it. I love all the Ned rig hate. I think that's a big part of why I win so much money on them 😂

I ain't scared, I fish down in them. 20lb Tatsu, 1/4oz weight, or a homemade 1/2oz flipping jig. Start way out on the edges, even further than you think you should because fish will roam the edges and those are often aggressive fish you can pick off without disturbing the ones that are tucked up in the middle of the brush. Don't let the bait soak and be ready when they bite. Not a time to "let them eat it", if you're a believer in that. Beaver dams are one of my favorite types of cover to fish. I believe they have at least one fish on them 100% of the time when I get a chance to fish them, and they usually produce at least one for me.

I fished a BBB at LOZ once, don't think I caught a keeper either day. It was not my jam at all, not sure I'd ever do it again. My buddy sight fished a spot off a bed that we weighed in. She was 3.01lbs, missed that $500 by .01lbs 😬

Well this past weekend was tournament stop number 3 for the year on Wilson Lake, KS. It's one of the most popular lakes in the state and always one of the most looked forward to tournaments for everyone it seems like, but I'll never understand the fascination. The lake is such a strange lake with very little cover other than rocks, and there's rocks everywhere so none really stick out. What little cover there is sits yards up on the shoreline of the drying reservoir. The fish are almost always skinny, and sickly looking from lack of food and over-pressure, but yeah, it's great I guess. Prefishing went okay. I couldn't find any big largemouth, despite discovering a cove loaded with big tree stumps that I didn't know existed. I guess the largemouth in the lake don't like stumps. With the cloud cover and wind, I did get on a decent smallmouth bite with a Berkley Drift Walker and burning a Bull Shad. Highlight of practice day by far came late afternoon. There's a bridge that has pilings in the water that I can sometimes catch bass off of, but more importantly, sometimes, there's stripers on it. This is the only lake in Kansas with a fishable population of stripers and I'm not going to miss my chance to try and catch one. No bass on a dropshot, didn't mark much at all, but I put a big flutter spoon on. One of my first drops, I popped it a few times, and one of the pops, it was stuck, then it started swimming. Thought I'd snagged one of the billions of carp or buffalo that live in the lake, but after several short, thumb burning runs, I saw the striped, white side. She barely fit in my kayak net, but I got her. There was an older gentleman and his granddaughter fishing on shore, so I pulled it through the water to the bank and asked him to take a couple pictures for me. Got a quick weight and watched her kick off. At 14.47lbs, it was my second biggest striper ever. I went back to the piling and dropped again, got smacked and missed it, then got hit again and hooked up. Not quite as big as the first one, but a second striper was a big bonus on the day. Tournament day set up like it should have been a great day, but it just wasn't. My bites were much smaller and fish I'd found the day before were still there, but not interested in eating. I lost a big smallmouth on the Bull Shad and had a couple good fish hit the Drift Walker and either miss it or pull off. Right at the end of the day, I found a 20ish inch fish on a bed, locked in and running gills off constantly. I set the kayak on the bank and ran a few different baits through her nest and she was very catchable, just needed the right bait. I switched to a KGB crappie and slow swam it over her head. She darted up behind it, inched closer, then flared her mouth open and grabbed the back of the bait. I swung, and smacked my trolling motor with my rod and never got a good hook into her, but it spooked her bad enough that she never bit again. I found that fish with about 10 minutes left, so time expired as I tried to get it to bite. Ended up 11th out of 43. Not a terrible finish, nor a surprising one for me at a fishery I always feel like I'm just trying to hang on at.

Depends on the day. Some days, I'm playing the numbers game with a Ned rig, some days I'm hunting big ones with a 7" glide.

We caught a bunch of small walleye, a few sauger, and one walleye that was 21.5", all on Neds. They're always welcome surprises, way better than the constant drum I catch some days. My legs were the same way except they didn't get it too bad.

@Robinhood21 I caught several smallmouth and 2 walleye off that point on Monday. We were wondering how that 2wd F150 was going to get that monster old boat that just launched back out of the water.

Beavers and leftover trotlines/limblines are always what scared me the most. I don't eat the fish I was catching doing it, so I don't do it anymore. This was even an alligator snapper, doesn't look like it feels very good though.

Snappers can't bite through fingers, just a myth. It'll hurt real bad and probably remove some hide, but that's it. My grandpa use to noodle for snapping turtles and was really good at it. I don't remember him ever getting bit. Just walked through muddy ponds and rivers until he stepped on one buried in the mud. He'd stand on the shell to hold them down and used a stick to tap around the shell until it tapped back, then he'd grab the opposite side, where the tail would be. I about caught another snapping turtle last night flipping water willows but thankfully it came up just short of the hook on my Rage Bug. It did get the back half of my bug though.

Buffalo and Quillbacks are both deeper bodied fish than that fish. I'm guessing it's just a white sucker.

Didn't have to be into work until 10 this morning, soooo.... Solid fish that sucked it down on a slow crawl. Walking it right in front of a seawall when this battle scarred old gal slurped it. Biggest swimbait fish I've caught in a long time. Gratuitous Croc shot. These jokers are spawning and they kept hitting my Bull Wake. This was 1 of 2 that found the hooks. That Gamakatsu Nano Alpha hook doing what it does. First cast of the morning was a monsta!

It can be really good now before the heat really sets in.

Hotdawg is who we got to watch put his clients on a bunch of fish at the first spot just down from the launch at White Hole. We didn't have the money to hire him that trip and it was truely a case of "You get what you pay for".

There shouldn't be tournaments where they're bringing fish in to weigh on lakes that small. One bad day where they lose a bunch of big fish could really screw up a lake that size. We do a roadrunner style kayak tournament and it's all small lakes (usually about 10 to chose from), but at least we're just taking a picture and putting them right back, just like a normal recreational guy would be if he caught a nice fish they wanted to take a picture of. The state doesn't allow guiding on small lakes because people start to feel like they own a lake and will run other people off, but it seems like having a 12-15 boat tournament on a >200 acre lake is effectively the same thing. I can't imagine many people pulling up to the ramp and seeing that many boats on a small lake and being excited about it. Not to mention, we know there's going to be a few guys in that group that have the tournament mentality, where it's okay to cut someone off or fish right on top of someone who is fun fishing "because they're in a tournament". I've never had an issue with a guide on a small body of water, but I have had multiple issues with tournaments on small lakes.

I've had a couple bad guide trips, it sucks but it happens. Worse one was on the White River in Arkansas. We wanted to catch browns on artificials. Guy had us fishing dead sculpins. I caught 1 sickly looking brown at the first spot while a nearby boat landed big browns one after the other. Each time we moved, he reported we were less and less likely to catch any browns, which of course we never did. A few little stocker rainbows ate our baits, but we had zero interest in those. The guide did have a ton of interest in the rod and reel combo I'd bought for the trip, so much so that after I offered to let him try it for a couple cast, he confiscated it for most of the remainder of the trip while I was stuck with his provided South Bend combo. On the way in, he hit a rock with his motor and the whole thing jumped off into the river. I caught the fuel line and hauled his motor up into the boat for him. Afterwards, my buddy and I dragged him and his boat for nearly 2 miles against the current back to the ramp, where he asked if we were going to pay for the remainder of our trip by cash or check. I told him we could call it even after we had just saved him a few hundred dollars at least in a tow back to the ramp, or I could shove him and his boat back into the current and he could figure it out for himself, we decided to call it even.

@Fishingmickey man that's a monster! I saw some of the giants they were catching at PK, including the one longer than the 26" Ketch board, made me think it might have been from there.

@Fishingmickey was that at PK?

I was already wrong on both my predictions 🤷‍♂️ I caught a 6.01lb, 19.75" largemouth on a homemade bladed jig last month, and I didn't catch a single, solitary fish on a crankbait while I was in Oklahoma, and surely no smallmouth that size.

I'm a multispecies guy, I can appreciate whatever wants to bite and when the bass aren't playing, I appreciate whatever fish is.